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Uber to Open Center for Research on Self-Driving Cars

Uber plans to open a research and development center in Pittsburgh, where the company plans to study the futuristic field of autonomous cars.Credit Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

Uber, the ride-hailing start-up, prides itself on the tens of thousands of jobs it says it has created for people across the world.

In the future, however, the humans may not be so important.

Uber on Monday announced plans to open a research and development center in Pittsburgh, where the company plans to study the futuristic field of autonomous cars.

Uber is positioning the center as a long-term bet. Aside from its private car service, Uber has experimented with food delivery, cargo transportation and courier services, among other offerings. An autonomous car service could broaden Uber’s service, even if it is years away from becoming reality.

Uber’s new institute, called the Uber Advanced Technologies Center, will be a joint initiative with Carnegie Mellon University, which has for years been on the forefront of research in robotics and autonomous vehicles. It will also pair Uber with researchers from the National Robotics Engineering Center. In the coming years, Uber will fund a number of robotics fellowships and professorships for the university.

And according to a report from Bloomberg, Google may launch its own competing Uber-like service at some point.

Google declined to comment on the story, pointing reporters to a cryptic tweet it sent publicly to Bloomberg’s Twitter account earlier in the day: “We think you’ll find Uber and Lyft work quite well. We use them all the time,” the tweet read.

Uber declined to comment on the Bloomberg report.

With the new center, Uber also wants to dive into mapping and vehicle safety research, two tangential fields that could help make a world without human drivers a possibility.

“When you think about what Uber does in our current business, accurate, real-time mapping is very valuable to us,” said Jeff Holden, chief product officer at Uber, in an interview. “Limitations in current mapping technology make that a harder problem.”

Uber has also been hiring a number of engineers who work on mapping research, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans.

Uber may have another problem. If driverless cars become a reality, it will be hard for the company to reconcile that with its promise of calling itself one of the largest creators of new jobs in today’s global economy. That has been a major message trumpeted by David Plouffe, Uber’s senior vice president of policy and strategy.

Mr. Holden said any success will be a long time from now, and is not at odds with Uber’s current promises.

“We’re talking about many, many years in the future,” Mr. Holder said. “Uber represents, and will represent for a long time, an awesome job opportunity for so many people.”